


Not in Palm City Anymore

by Wtchcool



Category: The Cape (2011), The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
Genre: Cover Art, Family, Friendship, Gen, Hallucinations, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Parody, Pink's Dress, The Lich part 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-01-14 12:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1266337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wtchcool/pseuds/Wtchcool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your average girl-gets-kidnapped-drugged-and wakes up in Oz- story. (An alternative to the wedding hallucination.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To the Middle of Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> To all members of The Cape fandom, past, present, and future, this crossover is dedicated.

 

          Jamie Fleming woke up with a concussion. Her head pounded as the blogger lifted it up from its position on the steering wheel of her Porsche.

 

          “What happened?” the brunette twenty-something groaned.

 

          “Arf! Arf!”

 

          Jamie, a.k.a. Orwell, turned to the passenger seat and froze.

 

          “This isn’t real,” she muttered. There, wagging his tail, was Frodo, the dog she’d had as a child—the dog that had died before Jamie had ever run away from home. She tried to figure out what was going on.

 

          She remembered that the CEO of ARK Corporation (a.k.a. the psychopath that called himself Chess, a.k.a. her father, Peter Fleming) was about to purchase all of the land along Palm City’s coastline. Her father having control of the city’s ports would be a Very Bad Thing, but there was one way to stop it. The city couldn’t sell the land to him if it rightfully belonged to someone else.

 

          The last thing Jamie remembered, she was following a lead, talking with Conrad Chandler, the long-lost heir of the Chandler family… Everything after that was a blank. She didn’t remember leaving the institution Conrad had grown up in, let alone getting in her car.

 

          She forced open the car door, climbed out of the vehicle, and gaped.

 

          She’d run someone over. Poking out from underneath the tires was a very familiar looking spider silk cape. She thought she was going to be sick—she couldn’t have run over Vince! Faraday was her partner, her best friend in the world… _Wait a minute._ _That’s not Vince_. What she could make out of the body didn’t match Vince’s figure. Not to mention the fact that lying not far from the corpse was a pair of red heels. Last time she checked, cross-dressing wasn’t Vince’s thing.

 

          There was something about those heels that seemed off to her. She felt like she should recognize… _Oh hell._ They were ruby slippers and they were lying, not on pavement, but on a yellow brick road.

 

          “Now I know this isn’t real, Frodo,” Orwell told the figment of her imagination. Frodo hopped down from the car and started nipping playfully at her heels.

 

          “Ohhh, those will go great with my dress!” someone exclaimed cheerfully. The blogger looked up to see who it was.

 

          “ _Raia?_ ” What was the aerialist doing? And what was she wearing? The blonde (one of Vince’s friends from the Carnival of Crime*) was decked out in an ankle length dress that, sure enough, matched the ruby slippers perfectly (and showed off her cleavage).

 

          “That’s me! The Good Witch of the North,” Raia introduced herself, as she tried the slippers on. “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” she asked.

 

          “I’m,” _not even going to point out that if this follows the movie’s screwed-up logic, you basically just asked me if I’m ugly._ “I’m not a witch. I’m no one special.”

 

          “Of course you’re special! You killed the Wicked Witch of the East,” she gestured to the body under the Porsche.

 

          “By accident and I got a concussion for my trouble.”

 

          “Oh, let me see that.” To Orwell’s confusion, Raia attempted to ‘kiss it better’—and it worked.

 

          “Somebody must’ve drugged me,” Jamie concluded. “Hey, if you’re the Good Witch of the North, shouldn’t you be telling me to take those slippers?”

 

          “But they don’t go with your outfit,” Raia gave her a blank look. “And if you’re not a witch, then unlike me, you’re going to be doing a lot of walking. I think you’d be better off in sneakers.”

 

          “Let me guess—you’re going to tell me I need to follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City to meet the wizard?”

 

          “You’ve heard of him! Do you need his help with something?” Raia asked.

 

          “What I need is to wake up,” Jamie was starting to get frustrated.

 

          “Wake up?”

 

          “I mean, return to Palm City, where I’m from. Hang on, why are we not surrounded by munchkins?” On second thought, if her car had dropped out of the sky, maybe it was a good thing that she’d landed in the middle of nowhere, where the only casualty was an evil witch.

 

          Before Raia could reply, there was a bang and a flash of orange smoke. When the smoke cleared, it revealed Gregor Molotov.

 

          “Kozmo,” Jamie whispered. But the bastard was supposed to be behind bars on Owl Island. (This dream was getting old fast.)

 

          Molotov, a.k.a. Kozmo, had left a string of dead bodies in his voyages through Europe, until he was captured and thrown into a Russian prison. The contortionist had escaped and headed to America—where he clashed with Vince, for a couple of reasons. Namely that Vince had elected himself the protector of Palm City and that the hero had something Kozmo wanted.

 

          Oh, Gregor looked pissed. Maybe he remembered her?

 

          “Who killed my sister Netta?” he growled. “Who killed the Witch of the East?”

 

          Netta…wasn’t that Conrad’s nurse? Was she the one that had drugged her?

 

          “That’s my cue, right? Uh… ‘I didn’t mean to kill her, it was an accident!’”

 

          “I can cause accidents, too,” Gregor snarled, advancing on the young woman.

 

          “Aren’t you forgetting the silk cape?” Raia called out, distracting him.

 

          “The cape! Of course, the cape!” The Russian contortionist turned away from the blogger and headed towards the Porsche. Just as he got to Netta’s body, the cape vanished. His head snapped up.

 

          “It’s gone!”

 

          “It’s right there,” Raia pointed to Jamie’s shoulders. “There it is and there it’ll stay,” she grinned.

 

          “Give me that cape,” Kozmo demanded, once again rounding on Fleming. “It’s no good to you; you don’t know how to use it.”

 

          “It must be very powerful, for him to want it so badly,” Raia observed.

 

          “It doesn’t belong to you,” Orwell told him.

 

          “Be gone, before somebody drops a horseless carriage on you!” the aerialist warned.

 

          Gregor looked up at the sky, as if expecting it to start raining sports cars.

 

          “Very well, but this isn’t over. That cape is mine. I’ll get you, you little daddy’s girl. And your dog, too!”  

 

* * *

 

       Maybe, since she knew how the story was supposed to end, she could skip the journey to the Emerald City. Jamie closed her eyes, tapped her heels together three times, and repeated to herself: “There’s no place like home.”

 

       She opened her eyes to find Raia, still in her ruby-red Good Witch of the North getup, scrutinizing her.

 

       “Trying to cut your journey short?” the blonde asked.

 

       “It didn’t work…” She wasn’t waking up that easily—probably too many drugs in her system, _damn it_.

 

       “It might have helped if you meant what you were saying,” Raia advised her.

 

       “If I…Of course I meant it! I want to go back to Palm City!”

 

       “But do you want to go **home**?” Raia pressed.

 

       Home…she didn’t really have a home to go back to. Since the time she had left home years ago, she had to hide from the investigators her father sent to find her. (And that was _before_ she had gotten daddy’s attention using her skills as a hacker/blogger. Now her father had a second, considerably more sinister team trying to track her Orwell alias down.)

 

       Vince’s reckless interrogation of one ARK employee had gotten her flushed out of her hiding place, forcing her to share his hideout for the time being—not that she minded it, _but_ …

 

       Vince didn’t know her. He couldn’t. And someday, when he had cleared the name that her father had tarnished, he would go back to his family and she would be alone, again…

 

       That said, she’d prefer going back to her clueless roommate to having to endure more of this stupid dream.

 

       “Alright, if I have to go to the Emerald City, I can at least drive…Wait a minute,” she took another look at the tires of her Porsche, noticing what was no longer under them. “Netta’s body was right there.”

 

       “Kozmo took it with him,” Raia explained. “I expect he’ll want to bury his sister before he makes another demand for the cape.”

 

       “I guess that makes sense,” Jamie said, frowning. “Come on Frodo,” she scooped the dog up as she got into her car. The doors closed, she turned the key in the ignition, stepped on the gas pedal—and the car refused to budge.

 

       “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” No reason to get upset. She could just take a look under the hood and fix whatever was wrong; she was an expert in cars, after all. Then her eyes flicked to the fuel gage. The gas tank was empty. Stifling a groan, she turned back to her friend.

 

       “I don’t suppose there’s a gas station around here?”

 

       “What’s a gas station?” Raia asked.

 

       “Right, no cars in Oz. Thank you, L. Frank Baum, for writing about a fantasy world sans modern technology.” That clinched it; this wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare.

 

       “Alright, Frodo, back out of the car; looks like we’re stuck walking,” the blogger climbed back out. “See you in Emerald City,” she added, before the witch bid her farewell.

 

* * *

 

       “Oh, look, Frodo, a fork in the road, and no GPS in sight,” Jamie grumbled what felt like hours later. “What kind of advice is ‘follow the yellow brick road’ if it goes in more than one direction?”

 

       “You could try going that way,” a man’s voice called out to her.

 

       Jamie’s brown eyes grew wide. She turned around and instantly spotted the blond man strung up on a pole like a living scarecrow, one arm now pointing in one direction. She was pretty sure neither his usual vigilante costume nor his civilian clothes normally had straw poking out of the cuffs of his sleeves.

 

       “Vince,” she breathed.

***So named because, when not performing in the circus, the members supplemented their income with robberies.**


	2. Caught In My Mind

       “What the hell are you doing up there?” Jamie yelled as she ran up to Vince.

 

       “The farmer stuck me up here. She said being a scarecrow was all I was good for, considering my birth defect. Plus, she was worried about keeping me out of trouble after I kept sneaking onto the Tin Man’s property,” he admitted sheepishly. “Could you let me down? It’s kind of uncomfortable up here.”

 

       Jamie bit her lip, trying to remember how Dorothy got the Scarecrow down in the movie, before Vince finally told her which nail to twist. She yelped as her best friend hit the ground and rolled.

 

       “You okay?” she asked, concerned.

 

       “I’ve been better,” he stood up and stretched. His muscles had to be sore from being stuck there for god knows how long.

 

       “I know I’m going to regret asking, but what birth defect are you talking about?”

 

       Scarecrow Vince blushed, muttering something under his breath about a cerebral cortex.

 

       “What was that?” Jamie asked.

 

       “I was born without a brain,” he mumbled a bit louder.

 

       “You mean metaphorically, right?” Jamie clarified. When her companion shook his head, her expression faltered. “Biology is a lot different here in this world,” she added, once she’d regained the power of speech.

 

       “I’m Vince,” the scarecrow (needlessly) introduced himself.

 

       “Orwell,” was her automatic response. Jamie frowned, as she grasped his outstretched hand. What was she doing? There was no reason she couldn’t be honest with Vince in a drug-induced hallucination. “That is, you can call me Jamie.”

 

       “Jamie, you’re new in Oz, right? I’ve never seen you here before. Judging by what I overheard, you stopped somewhere awhile back to ask for directions, but you’re still lost.”

 

       “Bingo,” Jamie replied.

 

       “Maybe I can help. Which way are you headed?”

 

       “To the Emerald City; I’m going to ask the Wizard,” whoever he turned out to be, “to send me home.” She gazed at his face, half-wondering if she should remove the cape and give it over to him now. Vince was the one that knew how to use it.

 

       “One of the witches gave you the cape,” Vince observed before she could say anything.

 

       “That’s right, the Good Witch of the North gave it to me after I sort-of accidentally ran over the Witch of the East.”

 

       “If Raia gave you the cape, you should keep it,” Vince assured her.

 

       “To keep me safe from Gregor Molotov?” Orwell asked. “I have it on pretty good authority that he’s going to seek his revenge for the whole me-killing-his-sister-thing. I imagine that would make me a pretty lousy traveling companion.”

 

       “Okay, yes, I was going to ask if you would mind if I go with you to see the Wizard. I wouldn’t mind asking him for some brains.

 

       “Gregor doesn’t scare me. I’m not afraid of anything!” Vince bit his lip, before bending closer to her to make (another) confession. “Except for explosives,” he whispered.

 

       Explosives? Oh! The real Vince had almost been killed in an explosion! (As if she could forget the event that had put him in exile.)

 

       “I don’t blame you for that,” she smiled. At least if she was going to be stuck in this dream, she had a friendly face to keep her company. Evidently Vince, whether real or imagined, would always keep her from feeling lonely. “To Oz?”

 

       “To Oz.”

 

* * *

 

       Orwell’s feet were killing her. She, Frodo, and Vince had been following that damn yellow-brick road for hours. She didn’t know about her friend, but she was feeling exhausted and—her stomach grumbled—hungry.

 

       How was it even possible to be exhausted when she was in a drug-induced sleep?!

 

       “Vince, I don’t suppose there are any rest stops along this route?” Where was a McDonald’s—or better yet, a Starbucks—when you really needed one?

 

       “You need a break,” the scarecrow realized. He smacked himself on the forehead. “Of _course_ you need a break. People need to eat and sleep,” he sounded agitated.

 

       “And that upsets you because…?” the blogger asked.

 

       “I’m frustrated because that’s something basic that I should have thought of—that anyone with a brain would have known! This is _exactly_ why I was confined to that cornfield. If I had a brain maybe I could actually _do_ something with my life!”

 

       “Just so we’re clear, you’re not about to break out into song, are you?” she asked. True, no one in her hallucination had been singing so far, but you never knew.

 

       “Sing—I just told you I hate my life, why would I burst into song?” her friend asked, now sounding more puzzled than pissed off.

 

       “No reason. Look, things will be better after we reach the Wizard. He’ll…” she trailed off. If her dream was following the movie, then the wizard wouldn’t give Vince a brain…

 

       …Because he doesn’t need one. He’s smarter than he thinks he is.

 

       “Earth to Jamie!” Faraday snapped his fingers in Orwell’s face. “You spaced out there for a minute. You really must be tired. Come on, there’s a place up ahead we can stop for a while.”

 

       “There is?” She didn’t remember Dorothy and Scarecrow finding a shelter for the night. She remembered something about apples and trees with big egos and fewer brains than a scarecrow and …

 

       “Wait, you said the farmer was mad because you kept going to visit the Tin Man?”

 

       “‘Visit,’” Vince scoffed. “Oh god, you make it sound like we were pals or something.”

 

       “I take it you’re not. But then…”

 

       “I went there to taunt Heartless,” Vince said, as a small château came into view. “I still say it was perfectly safe, since he’s in no position to go taking a swing at anyone, but Dana wouldn’t _listen_.

 

       “There he is,” her friend nodded towards a figure standing as still as a statue in front of what was apparently his castle.

 

       She realized that she recognized that costume, except she was used to seeing it in red leather. In the Land of Oz, the costume was made of metal from head to toe—boots, pants, jacket, gloves and mask all a dull silver, marred by rust. His hands and feet were bound with thick grey chords. Duct tape covered the man’s mouth so that he couldn’t speak—and from what she could make of his expression, he had quite a few things he wanted to say to Vince. Indeed, he began screaming in rage, his words garbled by the tape.

 

       “Oh my god!” Orwell exclaimed. “Dad?!”


	3. The Modern Man

            “What happened to you?” Jamie asked, as she approached to take the duct tape off Peter’s face. Hmn, if she took it off slowly it wouldn’t hurt as much…

 

            “Whoa, hold on—the Tin Man here is your father?!” Vince exclaimed.

 

            Orwell ripped the tape off quickly and was spared answering as shouting filled the air.

 

            “YOU! You son of a bitch! You useless, brainless—”

 

            “You two still hate each other. I guess some things will never change,” Jamie sighed. “Vince, do me a favor, go inside and find where he keeps his oil can. And grab something to cut these ropes off of him, too while you’re at it.”

 

            “Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment, but don’t go sending him into my home! Who do you think taped my mouth shut?” Peter asked.

 

            “Of course he did, why am I not surprised?” Jamie looked at Vince and pointed meaningfully at the chateau until he trudged away to do as she’d asked, before turning back to her father. “He’s not the reason you’re bound and rusted over here, though, is he? What happened?” she asked, thinking _‘Who else did you piss off?_ ’

 

            “The Wicked Witch,” he replied.

 

            “Naturally.”

 

            “She turned everything I was wearing to metal. Do give me some credit; I _am_ intelligent enough that I wouldn’t accidentally wind up in a predicament like this. Unlike your travelling companion, who probably doesn’t have the sense to get in out of the rain.”

 

            “Hey, _I’m_ smarter than to think someone could accidentally get tied up. That Witch is into the belt-and-suspenders approach, huh? Thank you, Vince,” she said as her partner returned to her side, “let me borrow that knife first.” Before slashing Peter’s ropes, she used the blade to prick her index finger. It bled, but there was no pain and she still didn’t wake up from her drugged slumber. Alright, there was no reason to panic. She would wake up sooner or later. In the meantime, she started slicing through the chords that bound Peter’s extremities.   

 

            “So, when Vince called you Heartless earlier, I don’t suppose that was a comment on your sterling personality?” Now done with the ropes, she reached for the oil can.

 

            “I had my heart removed after my wife and daughter were murdered,” he said bluntly, as she oiled the seams of his now metallic costume.

 

            “That’s a lot darker than I expected this world to be,” she frowned. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. In any event, this only seemed like the movie. Everything around her was a product of her mind…and she never did stop wondering what had happened to her mother.

 

            “They were both killed? Your wife _and_ your daughter?” she clarified.

 

            “Yes, they,” Peter took a moment to take a good look at his rescuer. “You remind me of her, of Jessie. You look so much like my daughter… What did you say your name was?”

 

            “It’s Jamie. Okay, that should do it. See if you can move now.”

 

            “I thought you said he was your father,” Vince hissed as Peter stretched and started moving around.

 

            “He…looks like my dad. Just like I remind him of his daughter and you remind me of someone I know back in Palm City.

 

            “Hey, Peter? Is it okay if we spend the night here? We’ll head out first thing in the morning, I promise. We’re on our way to see the Wizard, we just need to recharge first.”

 

            “You’re going to see the Wizard?” he asked.

 

            “Yeah, Frodo and I,” she stopped and shook her head. Frodo wouldn’t be coming back with her to Palm City because the real Frodo had been buried a long time ago. She looked down at the finger she had pricked. She had to remember none of this was real. She started over. “ _I_ need to get back where I belong and Vince is going to ask for some brains. You suddenly have an urge to join us and ask for another heart?”

 

            “No, I’m afraid I’ve no more use for hearts… On the other hand, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to ask for revenge…”

 

            “Frodo, we are definitely not in the fairytale anymore.”

 

            “What was that?” her father asked.

 

            “Never mind. Fine, you can come with us and ask the Wizard for whatever you want, but can we rest for the night first?”

 

            “Very well; follow me.”

 

* * *

 

            “Jamie, this is a stupid idea. Did you hear him? He’s planning to ask the Wizard for revenge. Why did you ask him to join us in the first place?” Vince whispered the next morning, as they waited for Peter to be ready to leave.

 

            “I figured he was going to end up joining us one way or another, better to just accept the inevitable. Do you hear something?” There was a voice coming from the Tin Man’s bedroom. It sounded like swearing…

 

            “THAT BLOODY WITCH!” Peter banged his door open. Jamie was surprised to see that he appeared to be wearing exactly what she’d found him in the day before, sans mask. “I thought the Witch of the East only turned the clothes I’d been wearing to metal. Turns out she ruined _all_ of my clothes! What the hell am I supposed to do now?!”

 

            “Take the oil can with you,” Jamie responded without missing a beat. “Are you still coming? I should warn you that—” A bang sounded from outside the manor. The three rushed outside and came face to face with Gregor Molotov.

 

            “Daddy’s girl, there you are! Found papa, did you? You should warn your new friends that if they get in my way, I’ll deal with them the same way I’ll deal with you. Now, give me that cape!”

 

            Ohhh, if only she knew how to use the cape properly, she could take a good swing at him and—wait, this was her dream. She could do whatever she wanted. Couldn’t be too hard. Just grab the cape, swing it at Gregor and— _bang_!

 

            “He disappeared again,” Jamie clenched her fists.

 

            “Again?” Peter asked.

 

            “Sorry, I should’ve told you earlier. The Wicked Witch of the West is after me,” Jamie explained.

 

            “That was the Witch of the West?” There was a strange gleam in Peter’s eyes.

 

            “Yep, that was him,” she confirmed. “Why?”

 

            “Because that was one of the men that killed my family. Let’s go see this Wizard.”

 

* * *

 

            By the time they had entered the forest, Jamie was well and truly sick of hearing Vince and her father snipe at each other.

 

            “Enough! Just call a truce until we get to Oz, please! At this point, I’d rather deal with lions and tigers and bears then listen to one more minute of this!”

 

            On cue, there was rustling in the trees and bushes up ahead.

           

            “What was that?” Vince asked.

           

            “I think we’re not alone anymore,” Peter replied.

 

            “Show yourself!” Jamie called into the shadows. The rustling continued. Someone was getting closer to them. Suddenly, a man leaped out onto the path, snarling at them.

 

            He wore jeans and a black leather jacket that Jamie was willing to bet read “LIONS” on the back. A set of brass knuckles sat on one fist.

 

            “Who dares to disturb the King of the Forest?” the Lion demanded.

 

            Huh, and here Jamie was sure that Rollo would have been cast as a munchkin…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Last time I updated “Pence” was the name of a ship, not our Vice President. Bet you thought this fic was dead. It rather was. But, turns out reviews are magic. 
> 
> Chapter title from “Mr. Roboto.”


End file.
